We talk to the filmmaker about his horror flick as he prepares to bring it to its biggest audience ever -- Facebook.

By Scott Collura

Michael Dougherty’s cult horror film Trick 'r Treat has a famously troubled origin story, getting its theatrical release cancelled by Warner Bros. back in 2007 and essentially winding up on a shelf for the two years that followed. But the film went on to play festivals and other one-off public screenings, eventually making its way to DVD and Blu-ray and gaining an increasingly beloved reputation among horror fans along the way.

And now Trick 'r Treat is returning to the big screen once more, with Legendary Pictures partnering with Beyond Fest for a one-night screening of the movie. The event will be held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on October 28, and will be followed by a panel featuring Dougherty and several members of the cast.

Which is great for you L.A. folks, but what about the rest of us? Well, the film and the panel will also be live-streamed nationally on Legendary’s Facebook page. But whether you’re a Trick 'r Treat fan or are just curious about it, this is a great chance to check it out.

I jumped on the phone to talk to Dougherty about the screening as well as his thoughts on Trick 'r Treat’s longevity and increasing popularity. Check it out…

IGN: Obviously this film has been played in theaters a bunch of times now, as it’s developed a cult following. How gratifying is it for you to see the reception that the film has gotten and the reputation that seems to be growing over time as well?

Michael Dougherty: It feels great. There’s nothing like it. It’s a very unique path for a movie to take. Usually, your movie comes out, and it’s a big deal for a month -- if you’re lucky -- then it sort of just fades and goes off onto DVD, and that’s it. That includes most big awards films and whatnot, tentpoles -- same thing. But for this tiny little movie, which didn’t have a lot of support, to continue to grow year after year solely from fans showing it to people, obviously using the love of the holiday itself, it’s kind of amazing. I don’t know of too many other films that have had this kind of a journey. For me, personally, it’s very rewarding because it’s a really personal film. This has very much been a passion project of mine for a long time. It was a very emotional journey. So to continue to watch it grow and never plateau -- it just continues to grow -- I’m kind of speechless.

Michael Dougherty on the set of Trick 'r Treat (guess which one he is)

IGN: I’m assuming you must have been pretty frustrated with what happened with the film initially. Can you give me a glimpse into that? Things turned out really well, so it maybe doesn’t hurt so much to look back now, but did you have a particularly rough time before you reached this point?

MD: Oh, yeah, that’s an understatement. It got dark. [Laughs] Like I said, this wasn’t just some job. This was my first script, and it was something that was based on a character that I did as an animated short in college, rooted in a holiday that I’ve loved ever since I was a kid. So this film, in a lot of ways, is like my baby. There were points along the process where I was told that I have an ugly baby, and that hurt.

IGN: “But it’s the most beautiful baby in the world,” right?

MD: [Laughs] Well now I’m hearing that -- but it really just made me question everything. It made me question, “Well, why am I doing this? Why bother?” But at the same time, in the back of my mind, I never lost faith entirely. I always loved it, and I always felt like there was something special there. Then, slowly, we started doing these screenings. Harry Knowles, over at Ain’t It Cool News, was the first one to step up and say, “I’ve heard this movie is good. I’d like to screen it.” Then Legendary was always a big supporter of the film. They smartly said, “Well, let’s just get a couple prints and start taking it out to film festivals,” and it just grew organically.

Then what I realized over the years, and then when it hit DVD especially, was that this is the best path for the film to take. Having done a couple of the tentpole superhero films, you start to see the way Hollywood almost forces you to like a movie, you know, through $100-million marketing campaigns, where you don’t have a choice. That movie is everywhere. It’s on your Pepsi can, it’s on the side of the bus, everyone knows about it, and everyone then flocks to see it. But rarely, I think, do people walk out of these heavily hyped films truly loving them. “Kind of liking” a movie is different. If you’re entertained by it for a couple hours, yeah, fine. But to truly love a movie to the point where you actually watch it annually, or you watch it several times in the same months, or you get it tattooed on your arm, there’s nothing like that -- and I see that. I see the fans making their costumes. The amount of people who have sent me photos of Sam tattooed on their bodies -- mind-boggling. That to me is true love. That says that this person didn’t just kind of like your movie because some marketing machine said they had to. This person found your film probably because some friend said they should check it out. So you know that this love for your film is organic and real, not bought and paid for by the marketing department.

IGN: Have you ever spoken to anyone at the studio about it, since it’s achieved this success? Have you ever gone back and talked about what went wrong in how it was handled originally?

MD: No. No, to me, it’s all water under the bridge, and it was what it was. I like to focus on the big picture and what lies ahead and not dwell too much on the past. Again, despite taking this awkward, weird, underground road, I do think it’s what was best for the film.